it makes you wonder
that Christianity’s important celebration
    welcoming the wondrous birth of the savior
    by a ****** mother
seems to have become mostly a holiday for children

they happily believe in Santa and his reindeers
    or in the Christ child & its servant
    depending on the region and its customs
expecting the delivery of gifts with shiny eyes
accepting the miracle of sleighs & animals
flying across the sky without questioning

adults nod knowingly & smile

yet there are many
    children at heart
who still believe that some benevolent high power
will shower them with presents from above
if only they  retain their sense of awe and wonder
keep their miraculous beliefs of yonder

one of the Orient’s oldest
and most beautiful important cities
inhabited for thousands of years
by generations after generations
of craftsmen, merchants, artists, dynasties,
famous architects of all styles and religions,
the western end of the old silk road
home to over 2 million citizens
until not long ago

a few weeks of modern warfare
were enough to destroy
what hundreds of generations had built
for their living as well as their sense of beauty

     rockets exploded churches, temples, and mosques
     artillery pulverized ancient palaces and new houses

     barrel bombs and poison gas
     killed the people

on tv we now see acres of urban wasteland
miles of rubble with no life
except for occasional tanks and soldiers
proclaiming victory over these ruins
in the name of a dictator whose regime
has become a puppet in global power games
no matter what the cost in lives or things

     to destroy is easy
     building things up is hard work

     with friends like these
     who needs enemies